September 30th is a day where we are asked to join together and wear an orange shirt in honour of the Indigenous children who were sent away to residential schools.
Between the 1860s and the 1990s, approximately 150,000 Métis, Inuit and First Nations children where taken away from their families, many against their will, and were forced to learn either English or French, completely removed from their culture and traditions. This was done in order to assimilate these children into Canadian society. Our government has acknowledge that this practice was very wrong and has since publicly apologised to the Indigenous people in 2008.
Why an orange shirt?
We are asked to wear an orange shirt in order to pay tribute to Phyllis Webstad, who was taken from her home as a 6 year old and sent to St. Joseph’s Residential School. On her first day of school, Phyllis was wearing a brand new orange shirt, given to her by her grandmother. Upon arriving at the school, she had to give up all of her belongings, including her clothes and her orange shirt. For Phyllis, the colour orange has always symbolised her experiences at the residential school and how she felt like no one cared about her feelings, how she felt she didn’t matter.
Phyllis started Orange Shirt Day in order to bring awareness of residential schools and to remind us all that every child matters.
For more information, please visit Orange Shirt Day